


A Year in the Life

by hotchoco195



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Jim is Jim, M/M, Meaningless Sex, Month by month fun, Pre & Post-Reichenbach, Seb is a fool, Temporary Character Death, seriously so much angst, the dynamics of loving a lunatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1212610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchoco195/pseuds/hotchoco195
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study of the habits of Sebastian Moran and his employer, including impossible messes, jail time and unnecessary heartbreak</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. December

It’s a brand new XS1, the steel shiny and hard and cold, fully customised judging by the butt. It glints at him from the case as if winking, as if the rifle can’t wait to be in his hands doing good work together.

“Jesus Jim...this is beautiful.”

“I have to admit it looks good next to you,” the criminal licks his lips, “Are you going to take it out or just stare all evening?”

“I remember you saying something similar the first time we fucked.” He jokes.

“You’re hilaaaaarious.”

Sebastian whips the gun up to his shoulder, peering down its length. Absolutely perfect, the weight balanced, the sight true.

“Now my gift looks like shit.”

“Aw, Sebby. However will you make it up to me?” he grins evilly.

“I can think of a few ways.” He leers.

He knows Jim can think of a hundred more, and that half of those will never be attempted, and that half of _those_ involve things Seb wouldn’t do for anyone, ever.

But he’ll do them when Jim asks.

“This is nice.” He ventures, waving at the tree and the gun and the weirdly cheesy tinsel that’s hung around the lounge.

Jim gives him an odd look and Sebastian realises he’s being too ordinary again. He runs a hand along the barrel and smirks.

“Wanna see me take for a test run?”

“Oh Basher, I thought you’d never ask.”


	2. January

Jim leaves mugs everywhere. _Everywhere_. All over the house, on couches and tables and sideboards and the floor, a slosh of cold tea or coffee in the bottom. It’s a good morning when Sebastian doesn’t knock over at least two on his way down for breakfast. It’s one of those habits that he moans about all the time and Jim never changes.

“But Sebby,” he says innocently, “I’m so terribly busy. I don’t have time to take them all the way to the sink.”

“Well I’m not your bloody maid.” Seb mutters.

“Oh no Basher,” Jim drapes an arm over his shoulder, nose running along the curve of his ear, “You’re so much more than that.”

 

He doesn’t want to cave. He never wants to. Sebastian’s main personality trait could be summed up as ‘stubborn’. But there’s just no arguing with Jim because he’s the boss, because he’s insane, and especially because his hands find their way into Sebastian’s trousers every time he tries to take a stand.

So he fucks his frustration into Jim’s body and he cleans up the tea whenever it spills.


	3. February

Sebastian lives with Jim, works for him, shares a bed on the nights Moriarty feels generous or antsy. But he wouldn’t say he knows him. There’s no way to know Jim really – Seb feels like he could have met the man ten years earlier and still be no closer, twenty, thirty. His mind is a twisting woven mess of fog and riddles and just plain insanity that makes it too hard to ever predict his reactions far.

But if there’s one thing he does know, it’s that Jim loves a spectacle. So the state of the house should not be so surprising.

“What the fuck is all this?” he gapes, carefully setting down his rifle case.

“It’s Valentines, silly!” Jim throws another handful of heart-shaped confetti in the air to add to the half a ton currently covering the floor.

It’s not just the confetti. Red and pink streamers criss-cross the roof and wrap around the banisters. There are so many flowers it looks like a florist’s store room. One corner of the kitchen is taken up by the biggest teddy bear Seb has ever seen, a real Uzi in its giant paws. The boss himself is in a white shirt, the buttons open to his chest, his jeans black and a bit loose.

“Why is it in our house?”

“ _Our_ house?” Jim raises a brow.

“Your house. Why is it...here?” he waved ineffectually.

“Because I wanted to make it special, Basher. How many Valentines does a person get in their life?”

“One a year, I reckon.”

“Oh haha, you’re so droll today. Now take your clothes off. I want you to fuck me at least twice before our reservations.”

“Reservations?”

“Tick tock, Sebby!”

 

Of course he has to clean the whole lot up the next day but it’s worth it for the brief moment when Jim’s finished and he doesn’t immediately kick Sebastian away, pulling the ex-soldier’s huge arm around him so they’re curled together. It’s almost enough to make Seb think it’s not all in his head, that Jim does feel the same way – or at least as much as he can.

Sebastian has no illusions. He’s in love with a psycho. It’s never going to be satisfying but he’s not sure it could have happened any other way.


	4. March

Even though Seb knows it’s all part of the plan, he has to fight to stay in his seat when Jim leaves the house. He wants to stop him, wants to beg him to find another way to do this – or better yet, not do it at all. Playing with Sherlock will only get Jim in trouble and they both know it.

But Jim’s the boss, so Sebastian gives a non-committal grunt as he leaves in his ridiculous tourist outfit.

“Don’t wait up for me, Sebby.” He titters, and Seb wants to shove his hand right down Jim’s throat.

The sniper knows he’s not going to move from the couch all day, waiting for the news reports, waiting for glimpses of Jim. He wishes he could be at the Tower, just to make sure. He doesn’t trust the madman alone.

The worst part, he thinks as he opens a beer, is that he’s completely free while Jim is locked up. It’s not a good role reversal. He’s not used to it, not used to the burden of having to make his own decisions. Sebastian was a soldier and he likes his orders, no matter how much he hates having to follow them. At least he has a framework to ignore. Having nothing is just...lonely.


	5. April

He misses Jim. It’s stupid - his face is everywhere – but Seb does. He hates coming home to the empty house, he hates carrying out his jobs like nothing’s going on. But Jim left him instructions and Seb has to follow through. The thought of the tantrum he’d have when he gets out and realised his marksman has been slacking off is too terrifying to consider.

Although he might enjoy it a little. Angry Jim is better than no Jim at all.

 

He goes to the trial in disguise and sits at the back, keeping an eye on his boss. He feels a bit proud at the fine figure Jim makes, sharp and elegant in the dock, face bored and unreadable as Sherlock talks. He can imagine the glee Jim’s containing and he feels it too, breathless with stifled laughter. Moriarty is _his_ , and the whole world’s marvelling at his brilliance. Jim turns to wink at Dr Watson and Seb shakes his head. So typically Jim.

As Moriarty turns back, his gaze skitters over the rest of the crowd and stops on Sebastian. He quirks a brow and the blond knows what the boss is thinking. He told Seb not to come.

“It’s too dangerous,” Jim drawls, “Poor little Watson will be there keeping an eye on things and I don’t want him spotting you and spoiling all our fun.”

But he’s not annoyed; rather, his lips twitch into an almost smirk before he straightens like nothing happened. It’s enough.


	6. May

When the verdict comes down (as it always had to) Sebastian picks him up outside the courthouse with a huge smile and shaky hands.

“Hey boss. I see the British legal system triumphs again.”

“I suppose it does.” Jim smiled wryly, settling into the leather seat behind him.

“Shall we celebrate? I’m sure you’ve got a month and a half of boredom to shake out.”

It’s all he can do not to blurt out something stupid, like he missed Jim, or that everything had gone well, or that he looked good. Jim would see right through any attempt at flattery or begging for praise. His face is serious, focused.

“We have things to do, Sebby. Drop me off at Baker St.”

He grips the steering wheel tighter. Of course he wants to see Sherlock. It’s all about the game in the end, isn’t it? Why the hell had Sebastian expected anything else? Jim probably hadn’t thought about him once in prison while he was spending his nights pining like an idiot.

“Right. Baker St.”

 

It’s the same all month. Jim’s either holed up in his study watching and planning and making the calls, or he’s out pretending to be Richard Brook, little-known actor and weakling. Just watching Jim slip into the character makes Seb feel sick, like he’s watching his boss disappear and one day he won’t resurface.

The only time they spend together that isn’t strictly work-related is when Jim finds him on the couch and lies in his lap, giggling over the latest gullible reassurance of Ms Riley. And even though it’s still not romance and poetry, Seb feels a million times better just having Jim there where he can touch, where he can hear that mocking voice.

Mentally distant Jim is better than physically distant Jim. Most days.


	7. June

.

.

 

.

 

.


	8. July

He doesn’t get up. There’s no point, not really. Even when the alcohol and cigarettes run out it’s easier to just lie there and take the pain than face getting clean, getting dressed, and going out to fetch more. Jim would probably have made some lackey do it but Sebastian wants nothing to do with those men now.

He doesn’t have to worry about the house. Jim owned it under one of his many fake names, so there’s no mortgage and no rent to worry about. If the electricity gets cut he wouldn’t notice anyway in the dark dank cocoon of the bedroom. His phone is in pieces by the front door, the first casualty of the day – after Jim, of course. The mirror in the hallway was the second. He hasn’t cleaned that up either.

Sebastian doesn’t watch the TV or read the papers. He doesn’t know about Sherlock’s fall. He doesn’t know that Moriarty has made himself cease to exist, a creation of the dead Holmes’ imagination. Maybe if he did he’d start to doubt the genius was ever real. Maybe he’d buy the Richard Brook lie too.

It might be easier that way.


	9. August

He hates him. He hates him, and he should have known better. Jim was crazy, right? You can’t count on crazy people. They do things that make no sense. They do things that are selfish and ill-advised and don’t ask for anyone’s opinion.

Seb thinks he’s lost about ten kilos in the time since Jim...since June. The job requests pile up, undone, and his guns start to collect dust, and the house has a distinct smell that would probably have driven Jim to murder him but he can’t clean, because what if he spray-and-wipes away the last of Jim’s cologne from the sheets?

The scars stand out hard and prominent on his slack skin and Sebastian chain smokes, the ash tray on the bedside table flowing over onto the floor. Yet another offence punishable by a good kicking, but there’s no one here to tell him off anymore, and that’s the whole problem.


	10. September

Seb’s not sure how he manages to be drunk before he even gets to the pubs, but he does somehow. It’s the same every time: walk in, draw himself up, and scope out the place. It’s a trick he learned in the army but he perfected it under Jim’s tutoring. Who here is game for a fight? Who’s ready for a fuck? Who’s here on their own dodgy crusades, who’s rich, who’s lonely, who’s half-pissed, who’s cheating and who’s on dates?

His knuckles are taped up, still split from last night’s brawl, and he’s got a huge hickey on one shoulder from a bird who thought his manhandling was a sign to be rough back. Sebastian hadn’t minded, not really, because it reminded him of Jim – but that’s not why he picked up women. If he’d wanted to replace the boss he could have found any number of willing men to beat the shit out of him and then suck his cock, but he chose women because they were easy and pliant and he could vent on them without having to think.

 

When he’s not drinking until he’s numb and then looking for ways to make himself feel, he’s taking shitty filthy jobs from the local ruffians. Bare knuckle shit he would never have touched before, back-alley executions, nothing that requires him to be too clever. He can’t look at the XS1 without putting holes in the walls so he doesn’t use his rifles, and since he’s usually half-cut or hungover it’s probably for the best.


	11. October

Seanán finds him laying into a gambler with sticky fingers and drags him off by the ear, shoving him in a car. Severin looks over from the driver’s seat with a grin.

“Hey mate.”

“What the fuck are you two doing?”

“Sean here thinks you’ve gone off the deep end. I told him to leave you be for a bit but he was very insistent.”

“I don’t need your help, Sean!”

“Yeah you do, Seb,” His brother shook his head, “But it’s alright, we’ll sort you out.”

 

They take him to the estate, and Sebastian swears if he hadn’t been tipsy he’d have fought them off and jumped out of the car but there are two of them and they’re both as big as him and it’s all so _hard._ And they lock him in his old room that still has posters from the ‘80s on the wall, and refuse to give him anything fun.

Seb reckons he curses them out about three hundred times a day, but that’s just a rough guess.

 

And when he’s sober, they take him out into the fields and stick a gun in his hand and make him shoot. Over and over and over, felling more game than they can possibly eat, because that’s how Morans deal with their problems, it’s how they process their feelings, and somewhere along the way Sebastian forgot that. Jim loved him as a sniper; why had he ever stopped?

It’s still shit, yeah, but it’s better.


	12. November

They drop Seb back at the house, his old rifle from home over his shoulder. Jim’s present can stay in its case until he feels strong enough to touch it. Seb’s got just over three weeks til Christmas and months of slacking off to undo. He has a mission now: kill, kill people so he doesn’t have to think about death.

He opens the door and drops his keys in the bowl, the smell much worse than before his abrupt kidnapping. He starts to open the windows, airing it out. Jim would be so ashamed to have a house of his in this state. Sebastian doesn’t want to disappoint him anymore.

He walks upstairs to put his things away and opens the bedroom door, dropping the case in an instant.

“Hello Basher. Did you miss me?”

 

Sebastian is seven different people. He wants to fall to his knees and weep; he wants to swear and shout; he wants to pinch himself to make sure this isn’t some hallucination. And because he wants to do everything, he does nothing, and it’s Jim who gets up off the bed and comes to him.

“You let this place go, Sebby. Not what I expected from my tiger.”

But he says it with a smirk, like he knows exactly what he did to Sebastian and _loves it_.

The sniper grabs him by the throat and slams him against the wall, lips tearing at Jim’s, teeth raking over him, all violence and possession and love. The smaller man tries to keep up but he can’t – Sebastian’s not caged anymore. He takes without giving, without caring, and he enjoys it.

“Don’t you ever,” he growls, “Pull a stunt like that again.”

And Jim nods, his reply very quiet. “Okay.”


End file.
